“You know I’d have come after you anyway,” Grim said. “I’d have found you. Even in the middle of a war. Even if you were back in Mathuin’s lockup. If you ever decide to get rid of me again, you’ll need to try harder. I know you’re telling the truth. And so am I, about Flannan. You want to check, there’s two monks can back me up. Fellow that looks after the birds, Eoan. He knows how many messages Flannan sent to Mathuin and how many came back. Head archivist, Ríordán. He’s seen that translation, with the second page and all. In Flannan’s own hand. And there’s the message the bird never delivered. It appears the target will be eliminated by midsummer. And the bit about the bait. He was planning to take you to Laois, all right. Take you there and hand you straight over. But when he found the document, he got a better idea. Way of getting rid of you with a lot less trouble.”

“He could have just killed me.”

“Nah. Hasn’t got the guts for that. Childhood friend and all. I bet he caved in early after that first challenge failed, the one your man was part of. Found a soft spot betraying his comrades, nice little purse of silver in exchange.”

“Now you’re making things up.”

“Could be true, though.”

“I think I’m going to be sick.”

“Here—” He was beside me in a moment, supporting me as I leaned over and retched helplessly. There wasn’t a lot to bring up. I was done soon enough. Now we were both quiet. I leaned on Grim, despising my weakness.

“He’s still out there somewhere,” I said, wishing my voice was steadier. “On the way south, maybe. He’ll tell Mathuin everything. What we’re doing, where we’re living . . .” I felt a pang of longing for our little house, our garden, our daily existence at Dreamer’s Wood. I even missed wretched interfering Conmael. We wouldn’t be able to go back there. If Mathuin feared my influence enough to send Flannan out to hunt me down, he wasn’t going to let this go.

“Not if we find him first,” said Grim in a voice no less deadly for being soft. “Flannan, I mean. But now’s not the time to talk about that. Something you might think about, though. How much of that, after the ritual, was the curse playing with your head. Making you sad, stopping you from seeing the good things. The good in yourself. Easy enough to lose sight of it, sometimes.”

He helped me indoors, where I got back into bed. I sat there sipping Brother Marcán’s brew and wishing the monk would go away so I could have a bath and change my clothes.

The brew was all right. True love’s tears had a bitter aftertaste—appropriate, when you thought about it—but Marcán had countered that with a few drops of honey. Not bad. For a monk.

I rested my head against the piled-up pillows. My heart felt bruised. My mind felt hollow. A blow from an enemy was something you could deal with. It was what you expected. But being betrayed by someone who had once been a trusted friend . . . That was hard to bear. Almost as hard to bear as the knowledge that I had let myself be duped. I should have known. I should have worked it out. I’d had my suspicions about Flannan. The man he’d once been, my friend and Cass’s, would not have used those cruel arguments to persuade me. But folk do change over the years. Perhaps I hadn’t put it all together because I didn’t want to. Friends were few and far between. Most of Cass’s and mine were dead. That made anyone who was left doubly precious.